About Outside Hire

Outside Hire is a growing outsourcing company with over 75 employees, building custom products and solutions for our clients. We're dynamic, fast-paced, and always evolving!

https://outsidehire.com/about/

About The Role

The Senior Backend Engineer with DevOps Focus serves as a primary backend developer (70% time) with specialized responsibility for development infrastructure and environment management (30% time). This engineer contributes significantly to core application development while ensuring fast, reliable deployment pipelines and supporting lower environments to accelerate the development team's ability to promote artifacts to production.

Backend Development Responsibilities (70% Time Allocation)

Service Development: Primary contributor to gateway project microservices development using Java, Spring Framework, and AWS services
Feature Implementation: Develop assigned features and components with same accountability as other Senior Backend Engineers
API Development: Build and maintain APIs with emphasis on deployment-friendly design and cloud optimization
Database Integration: Implement data access layers and database integration with deployment and environment considerations
Testing & Quality: Write comprehensive unit tests, integration tests, and participate in code review processes
Performance Engineering: Focus on application performance, scalability, and cloud optimization

DevOps & Environment Management Responsibilities (30% Time Allocation)

Lower Environment Management: Own and maintain development, staging, and testing environments ensuring consistency and reliability
CI/CD Pipeline Optimization: Build and maintain automated deployment pipelines focused on fast promotion from dev to production
Developer Experience: Optimize development workflows, build processes, and deployment speed to maximize team velocity
Environment Provisioning: Provision and configure development and testing environments using Infrastructure as Code
Deployment Automation: Automate artifact promotion between environments with proper testing gates
Monitoring & Alerting: Implement monitoring for lower environments and development workflow optimization
Development Tooling: Maintain and improve development tools, local environment setup, and developer productivity tools

Core Focus Areas

Fast Development Cycles: Ensure developers can quickly test, deploy, and iterate in lower environments
Artifact Promotion: Streamline and automate the process of promoting code from development through staging to production
Environment Consistency: Maintain parity between development, staging, and production environments
Developer Productivity: Remove deployment friction and infrastructure blockers for the development team
Quality Gates: Implement automated testing and validation in deployment pipelines

What They Will NOT Do

Manage production infrastructure or production deployments (primary production management delegated to dedicated DevOps or SRE)
Write business logic without considering deployment implications
Make architectural decisions without Engineering Manager consultation
Handle product management or stakeholder communication responsibilities
Serve as primary on-call for production issues (focus on development environment support)

Key Accountabilities & KPIs

Backend Development KPIs (70% focus):

Feature Delivery: 100% of assigned backend features delivered per sprint commitments

Code Quality: >90% test coverage, zero critical security vulnerabilities in developed code

Performance Standards: All developed APIs meet defined SLA requirements (Integration Success: <5% integration test failures for developed services

DevOps & Environment KPIs (30% focus):

Development Velocity: Deployment time from code commit to development environment

Environment Availability: >99% uptime for development and staging environments

Promotion Speed: Artifact promotion from development to staging

Developer Satisfaction: Development workflow satisfaction scores >4.0/5 from engineering team

Build Success Rate: >95% successful builds and deployments in lower environments

Environment Consistency: Zero configuration drift issues between development, staging, and production

Required Backend Development Skills (Java/AWS Stack)

Java Development: 5+ years Java development experience with Spring Framework and microservices
AWS Application Development: Experience building cloud-native applications using AWS services
Database Integration: Strong experience with AWS RDS, PostgreSQL/MySQL, and JPA/Hibernate
API Development: RESTful API design using Spring Boot with focus on deployability
Testing: Comprehensive testing experience including unit, integration, and automated testing
Security: Application security best practices and PCI-DSS compliant development

Required DevOps & Infrastructure Skills

CI/CD Tools: Proficiency with AWS CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, and Git-based workflows
Infrastructure as Code: Experience with AWS CloudFormation, CDK, or Terraform for environment provisioning
Container Technologies: Docker experience and basic Kubernetes (EKS) knowledge
AWS Cloud Services: Solid understanding of AWS services, networking, and deployment patterns
Monitoring: AWS CloudWatch, logging, and development environment observability
Scripting: Bash, Python, or similar automation scripting for deployment and environment management

Required Certifications & Preferred Qualifications

Preferred (not required)

AWS Certification: AWS Developer Associate or Solutions Architect Associate
Container Experience: Docker and basic Kubernetes operational knowledge

Nice to Have

Advanced AWS Certifications: AWS DevOps Engineer Associate
Development Tools: Experience with developer productivity tools and workflow optimization

Preferred Project-Specific Capabilities

Development Workflow Optimization: Experience improving developer productivity and deployment speed
Environment Management: Managed development and staging environments for financial or regulated systems
Fast Deployment Cycles: Built systems supporting rapid development iteration and testing cycles
Payment System Development: Backend development experience with payment processing systems
Team Support Focus: Experience in roles supporting other developers productivity and workflow
Startup Environment: Worked in fast-paced environments where developer velocity is critical

Success Profile

The ideal candidate is a Developer-First Infrastructure Engineer who:

Primarily a developer who understands infrastructure enough to optimize the development experience
Focuses on team velocity and removes infrastructure friction for other developers
Automates repetitive tasks and builds tools that make the entire team more productive
Thinks deployment-first when building applications and considers operational concerns in development
Supports team success by ensuring fast, reliable development and testing environments
Balances development and operations without losing focus on primary development responsibilities

Why Outside Hire

Inclusive Environment: Dynamic work environment that values creativity and collaboration
Cutting-Edge Projects: Modern, well-architected platform with best-in-class tools
Impact: Build systems that process real financial transactions
Modern Stack: Quarkus, Kotlin, AWS, and AI coding assistants
Competitive Benefits: Competitive salary, remote work, professional development
Growth Culture: Continuous learning, innovation, and recognition
Work-Life Balance: Flexible hours, remote-first, sustainable pace

Outside Hire is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Last Updated: December 2025

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